The bestseller lineage. What each book actually said, and what its sales figure rests on

The rule of a tenth, distributed by banks

The oldest book still on the personal-finance shelf began as advertising. George Clason's parables of Babylon were pamphlets handed out by banks and insurance companies from 1920 to 1924, then bound as The Richest Man in Babylon in 1926. Their rule: "For every ten coins thou placest within thy purse take out for use but nine."¹ Sales are given as 2 million in one account and 4 million in another. Neither traces to an audited figure.¹

The Carnegie story that has no witness

Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich of 1937 rests on a story: that Andrew Carnegie commissioned Hill to study success. Carnegie's biographer found "no evidence of any sort that Carnegie and Hill ever met", and Hill first made the claim after Carnegie died in 1919.² Hill's biographers claimed 20 million copies over fifty years; a historian suggests "considerably less". Figures of 70 million and 100 million circulate on retail pages with no source.²

The columnists

Sylvia Porter wrote about money for newspapers from the mid-1930s, first under initials that hid her sex, and was syndicated in 450 papers by 1937. Her Money Book of 1975 sold over a million copies. Her magazine, launched in 1983, failed after the 1987 crash.³ Jane Bryant Quinn's column ran twenty-seven years in more than 250 papers.⁴ Andrew Tobias's The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need, from 1978, has run to ten editions.⁵ These are the honest strand: journalists paid by readers and publishers, whose advice was to buy less of what the industry sold.

The preachers

Dave Ramsey filed for bankruptcy in 1988, self-published Financial Peace in 1992 and built a radio and course business on it. His debt snowball pays the smallest balance first "regardless of interest rates", and his 12 percent return assumption is widely criticized.⁶ His company earns from books, courses, and referral fees paid by financial advisers who want his listeners: in 2017 about 1,000 advisers paid $400 to $900 a month each for the territory.⁶ Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad, self-published in 1997, claims over 32 million copies, a figure that traces to the publisher's own 2015 press release; for years the author declined to say who "rich dad" was.⁷ Suze Orman's books sold in the millions; her 2012 prepaid card drew criticism for hidden fees and a false promise about credit scores, and was withdrawn in 2014.⁸

What the books have in common

Every book in this lineage tells the reader to spend less than they earn, avoid debt and save. That advice is right, and it is the same advice a farmer gave his brother in Greece twenty-seven centuries ago. What the books add is a personality, a system and a sales figure.

Look at where the money in the lineage comes from. The first bestseller was distributed by the sellers of savings and insurance. The most successful modern brand earns referral fees from the advisers it endorses. The largest sales claims come from the publishers making them. The books that were paid for by readers alone are the columnists', and theirs is the strand that told readers what not to buy.

What none of them measure

No book in this lineage gives the reader a way to measure what their own counterparties keep. They tell the reader to save a tenth, to snowball the cards, to buy assets. They do not say: here is what your insurer paid back last year against what it collected, here is what your fund's manager retained, here is the sum of what you paid the people you dealt with. The advice industry, from the pamphlet to the podcast, has been about the household's behavior. The other side of the transaction has not been its subject.